death, and hugging and whitewashing the guilty one.

In the second act a grand Roman official is not above trying to blast
Appelles' reputation by falsely charging him with misappropriating
public moneys. Appelles, who is too proud to endure even the suspicion
of irregularity, strips himself to naked poverty to square the unfair
account, and his troubles begin: the blight which is to continue and
spread strikes his life; for the frivolous, pretty creature whom he
brought from Rome has no taste for poverty and agrees to elope with
a more competent candidate. Her presence in the house has previously
brought down the pride and broken the heart of Appelles' poor old
mother; and her life is a failure. Death comes for her, but is willing
to trade her for the Roman girl; so the bargain is struck with Appelles,
and the mother is spared for the present.

No one's life escapes the blight. Timoleus, the gay satirist of the
first two acts, who scoffed at the pious hypocrisies and money-grubbing
ways of the great Roman lords, is grown old and fat and blear-eyed and
racked with disease in the third, has lost his stately purities, and
watered the acid of his wit. His life has suffered defeat. Unthinkingly
he swears by Zeus--from ancient habit--and then quakes with fright; for
a fellow-communicant is passing by. Reproached by a pagan friend of his
youth for his apostasy, he confesses that principle, when unsupported by
an assenting stomach, has to climb down. One must have bread; and 'the
bread is Christian now.' Then the poor old wreck, once so proud of his
iron rectitude, hobbles away, coughing and barking.

In that same act Appelles give his sweet young Christian daughter and
her fine young pagan lover his consent and blessing, and makes them
utterly happy--for five minutes. Then the priest and the mob come, to
tear them apart and put the girl in a nunnery; for marriage between
the sects is forbidden. Appelles' wife could dissolve the rule; and she
wants to do it; but under priestly pressure she wavers; then, fearing
that in providing happiness for her child she would be committing a sin
dangerous to her own, she goes over to the opposition, and throws the
casting vote for the nunnery. The blight has fallen upon the young
couple, and their life is a failure.

In the fourth act, Longinus, who made such a prosperous and enviable
start in the first act, is left alone in the desert, sick,
blind, helpless, incredibly old, to die: not